I bought my Macbook Air in March of this year (2013), and lately, every once in a while, the fan comes on and it's quite loud. Why does this happen and how can I keep it from being so loud?
MacBook Air (13-inch Mid 2012), iOS 6.1.4
First, the fan is always running.
Second, it increases in speed to cool the computer as it heats up.
It happens when you are running programs that cause the processor to heat up such as games or graphics.
I'm not gaming or anything like that, or graphics for that matter. I am running a program, Duplicate Annilhator, for iPhotos, and that's when it started up. But it did this once before when I just had my Mac open.
I realize that the fan has to run to keep the MBA cool, but it's a little louder than usual. And it doesn't happen all the time, but stil.
Any other suggestions for what I can do to "quiet" down my MBA would be appreciated.
Thanks!
Use a utility like iStat Menus 4.06 to monitor fan speed and termperature for the computer. When the fan starts to ramp up keep track of what you are running. Also,
Open Activity Monitor in the Utilities folder. Select All Processes from the Processes dropdown menu. Click twice on the CPU% column header to display in descending order. If you find a process using a large amount of CPU time (>=70,) then select the process and click on the Quit icon in the toolbar. Click on the Force Quit button to kill the process. See if that helps. Be sure to note the name of the runaway process so you can track down the cause of the problem.
Thanks, I'll try this!
With the 2010 Air, sometime for no apparent reason the Air starts up the fan and blows it hard and it's very loud. I typically reboot on the theory that if it NEEDS the higher air throughput it will turn the fan on again. But what normally happens is the fan will be once again silent upon reboot. Not sure what is causing this.
It may be that putting the air on a non hard surface where air can't get to the bottom might make it heat up more which could start up the fan louder. In other words, it's not a bad idea to let the air circulate under the Air when possible.
THANK YOU for this tip. I was having a similar problem with my Air, and this advice solved my problem. Very grateful for the help.
I have a 2010 Macbook Air. Quite frequently the fan starts and runs for a long time. The only way I can stop it is to turn the computer off. IF continues to run if I put it too sleep. I looked at the energy monitor and there is nothing using much energy, perhaps one or two applications like Parallels but only at abouot a 3-5% level. This is a releatively new problem - meaning it didn't do it for the first 2.5 years. None of the potential solutions listed here work. So APPLE, let's see if you can explain this.
how to stop fan from running, macbook air
